


Find Me

by Lunarium



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Modern Era, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-27 21:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5064607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/pseuds/Lunarium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An elf in the modern day, previously thinking she was alone, finds another as herself but shrouded in an elusive and disturbing predicament.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find Me

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta, AmyFortuna!

The first time it happened, he was gone before Galadis could even get out of her seat. 

She had been keeping an eye on him ever since taking note of him sitting on a bench near the lake, looking out, before taking a slow stroll by the lakeshore of Navy Pier. His clothes were not as worn as she would have expected, and his appearance well-kept enough for a man living on the streets. He seemed at peace living in this manner, an ancient prince, an elven nomad among mortals, keeping away from trouble and notice of the modern humans. He kept his hair long even at this era, which gave his fair face a young edge, coaxing kindness in the mortals who regarded him and his situation. If he strayed to some other location of the city he always returned to Navy Pier. She didn’t know how long he had been here, but he surely must have loved the city as much as she had, both before and after the great Chicago Fire. She had settled down and was pretending to be a newspaper delivery girl in the mornings while also living in a high-rise downtown with the riches she had accumulated over millennia. 

Maglor, however, didn’t seem to have carried any of his riches from his previous life. Whatever money he could find went to food, or in rare times, if he managed to save enough, buy a ticket for the new Shakespeare Theater. 

After all this time, he still harbored a love for the arts. That knowledge made her smile. 

She did not know Maglor personally, her only connection with the Noldor being by affinal means, but she had heard him sing while passing by his lands before and knew of his deeds, good and bad. The fact that he had faded out of history fascinated her, for she always wondered if he remained just out of sight. 

The mortal man came to Maglor while they were both dining in the Hard Rock Cafe. She was sitting in a far corner keeping an eye on the once princely Noldo, considering her options on how to finally approach him. He didn’t seem to bother covering his ears as much as she did (she currently had a knit hat pulled down over them), but once the man settled beside him, perhaps too close, and began to speak to him, Maglor’s world seemed to come crashing down. 

She watched, still as a rock, as Maglor’s eyes widened, the fear growing more apparent as the man spoke, interrogating him with words that did not reach the people around them, who did not take notice as the man motioned to Maglor’s ears and other parts of his body, the ruckus of the band and the chatter claiming all attention of everyone else. 

f

“Your usual today, Gladys?” asked the waitress, coming up to Galadis’s table, but her eyes were still on Maglor. The man had gripped Maglor’s wrist and led him out of the building, and turning her head to peer out the window, she watched as Maglor was escorted into a black car. Before he disappeared completely from her view, all fear was gone from his face. 

The car drove off and out of her sight. 

“Yeah…usual…” Galadis said, finding her mouth suddenly dry. The window vaguely picked up her reflection, resembling that of Alanis Morissette, as others had pointed out to her in recent years. 

The music of the band fell mute to her ears as she ate, replaying the exchange over in her mind. An ill feeling crept in her stomach that had nothing to do with the meal, but with the thought of the once proud Noldo being persuaded into prostitution as a means for a living, considering the intimate way the man touched him, and it would explain the state of comfort he was in despite his financial status. And yet it seemed improbable that Maglor, one of the Eldar, could behave in the same manner of Men, for they were not as driven by lust as the Secondborn. 

_But we are fully in control of our bodies_ , she thought, though try as she might, studying the beauty of the pretty dark-skinned waitress who always waited on her or the beautiful couple across the restaurant, she simply could not induce arousal.

 _I’m just too old._

A second thought then came to her, of how Maglor’s ears were visible to the man as he pointed to them. 

She set the fork down, her hands trembling with disgust and fear, and wondered if she was the final elf to lay eyes on the famed minstrel of the House of Fëanor.

*

After just a few days, when she had accepted that Maglor had been gone, taken and picked apart by scientists who had discovered immortals among them, she saw him again. Sitting close to the same spot as she had found him before at the Hard Rock Cafe, he was poring over a slip of paper. A bandage over his hand was clearly visible from the distance, confirming one theory that he was probably not exchanging money for what pleasures his body could provide.

Either way, Galadis had not expected to see him so soon, imagining that he had suffered some terrible fate under the hands of mad scientists. It was a silly thought fitting to come from the minds of children, but the bandage was all she needed to confirm her dark suspicion. The mortal man had _noticed_. 

Again, the man arrived. Seated across from Maglor, they spoke, but with his back turned towards her she could not glean what the man was saying. But Maglor’s face grew paler as the discussion went on, and finally, he nodded. Again he was escorted out of the cafe and into the black car, and again they drove off, all the while Galadis watched in silence, hidden by her book and baseball cap. 

Maglor returned to the cafe a few days later, looking a little different, more weary than before, and again he met up with the man. It was becoming routine. 

She kept a log in the back of her notebook, jotting down each meeting between Maglor and the man. He did not seem to be in any immediate danger, but there was something certainly happening between them, an exchange of a part of Maglor’s body for science, at any rate, and she wasn’t sure she liked seeing the toll it was taking on Maglor. She spent nights awake fantasizing what went on, of Maglor’s face contorted into pain as scientists cut into him, testing the extent of his life as an elf, a being unheard of in the modern world. 

Once, his famed voice reached her ears as her horse galloped down the plains parallel to the Gap. Again she heard his voice that night, sweet and melodic, the pitch rising to an agonized shriek, jolting her awake. Panting, her body trembled, Maglor’s terrified shrieks still ringing in her ears. 

She turned to her side and there he was, Maglor on his knees beside her bed. Blood drenched his face as shakily he reached out for her. 

“Please,” he begged in their tongue, so ancient and forgotten to her until this moment. “Find me. It is so lonely and cold there.”  
Galadis placed her hand on top of his. “Where do they take you?”  
But instead of an answer, blood began to teem from the corners of his reddening eyes, trickling down his cheeks. “They have taken too much from me. How can I continue on with what remains?” His grip on her wrist nearly crushed her bones as fire burst in his eyes. “Please, stop them!” 

Shrieking, Galadis squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them again, Maglor was gone. 

She made up her mind. 

The next time she spotted him, back at Navy Pier again. The man was already with him, gazing out over the lake as Maglor wept in his hands. When he at last stood up with the mortal man, she sat straighter, keeping her eyes on them. They passed her without any indication from Maglor that he had recognized her as one of his own, her face far fairer than any mortal woman. 

She counted to ten, gave them enough space before standing up. The autumn chill brought a breeze rustling through her dark hair. She tucked herself in her baseball jersey, which caught the eye of one burly man who took one look at her face and winked, leering. 

“Cubs fan, darling?” he drawled. 

“What of it?” she retorted coolly. 

_Their last win was in 1908_ , she thought proudly, never tearing her eyes from Maglor and the other man. _That wasn’t so long ago._

Leaving the archway of Navy Pier, they entered the car and were gone moments later, and right behind them, Galadis unlocked and mounted her bicycle, checked to make certain the lid of her newspaper carrier was tightly locked, and sped off at lightning speed. Despite the congested traffic characteristic of the city of Chicago, she was able to zoom around and past streets with relative ease, putting her elvish blood to good use, for her kind could move at a swifter pace than any motor vehicle, her sharp and alert mind making quicker decisions and turns. 

The chase took her far from the research hospitals she had suspected they would head towards, finding herself chasing them down Lower Wacky Drive, her heart hammering as she feared for her own safety. 

To her horror, the car got onto an entrance ramp and merged into the Dwight Eisenhower Expressway, westbound, and drove far out of her sight. 

She stopped her bike, staring. She could not follow them on the expressway, though with her speed she could take other routes to get to their same destination. 

“But where are they headed?” she wondered, then realized a moment later. She rounded back and found Harrison Street before turning west there and continued on her chase, the license plate of the black car burned into her memory. 

She rode for nearly ten miles before the hospital, surrounded by the green plains, loomed ahead, and suddenly she caught sight of the black car again, but they did not enter the parking lot. Cursing, she followed them, though she was thankful she could keep them within her sight again. 

At long last, the car turned into a parking lot and parked near a building. It was only one story high, long and deserted. Gone were the sounds of cars honking and people shouting, the regular noises of her home downtown. This western suburb had been growing more desolate over the years, bare and silent, nature taking over around the building. She hid behind the bushes and watched as the mortal man held the door open for Maglor. For the first time she could take a closer look at his face, straw-colored hair slicked back, face obscured by shades, a lopsided grin as Maglor stepped through the door. 

Galadis jumped to her feet and rummaged through her bike. The newspapers and her mail (she didn’t think she would find a valid use for her own junk mail some day) went under her arm, the rim of her cap pulled down, and from her pocket she produced a piece of bubblegum and popped it into her mouth. She walked briskly into the building, glanced briefly at the list of names on the faded gold plaques, and made for the receptionist’s desk. 

“I was told to drop this off in Dr. Al-Khatim’s office,” she said, smacking her gum. 

“Second door to your right,” the receptionist replied in a bored tone, her eyes never leaving her computer screen. 

Galadis popped her gum and slid through the double doors, spitting out the gum once she was inside. So far everything appeared normal, but there was an undeniably unsettling feeling that she could not shake. She tiptoed past corridors and corridors, all long and empty, and never daring peek into doors open slightly ajar. The walls of the medical center were a dull yellowish green, a color which alone made her heart sink and feel helpless. She imagined Maglor coming to this place regularly, trapped down to a surgical room, with neither analgesics nor anesthesia as the man smiling down at him gently explained why he needed him to remain fully awake and aware for the procedure. 

Galadis shuddered, suddenly wishing to escape out of the building and ride back to the comfort of her own home and just give up on saving the possibly last of her own in the modern world. But she pressed on. 

Wherever she walked, she could not find neither the man nor Maglor nor anyone who looked like a Dr. Al-Khatim or anyone at all. 

But there were sounds. Drilling, and she froze, anticipating hearing Maglor’s agonized shrieks ripping through the old lab. But none came. 

“Where are you?” she hissed angrily to herself. 

She rounded a corner and froze, not believing at first that she was finally seeing him. It was the same long dark hair, but Maglor was out of his clothes and in a green and blue patient gown, his arm hooked up to an IV hanging from a wheeled pole which he pushed along with him, walking alone. 

A surge of energy overcame Galadis. She bolted towards Maglor, but she was suddenly unable to speak before the words of their ancient tongue, long unspoken in the passing of years, rolled off her tongue, “ _Daro! Odulen an gi leithiad!_ ” 

Maglor paused in his tracks. Turning slowly, he regarded Galadis as if unbelieving his own ears. She pulled off her cap to show him her ears. 

“I’m Galadis, and I’ve been keeping an eye on you,” she said. “I’ve seen you with that guy, and I was getting worried. I couldn’t just sit back any longer and -”

“How…did you find me?” he asked, studying her with wide eyes. 

“I followed,” Galadis said simply. “But I doubt they took any notice if you didn’t. You probably didn’t even know there was another elf still roaming here, did you?” 

Maglor shook his head. 

Joking aside, Galadis leaned forward. “Is this where they take you? This doesn’t seem like a proper medical facility. And…I dreamt you were begged to be saved. For me to find you.” 

“I…did?” Maglor laughed lightly. 

Galadis nodded. “And the man who you’re always talking to. He’s eerie.” 

“Max Headroom? Everyone feels like that about him at first. But he’s not the main reason I’m doing this.” 

Maglor produced a photo he had clipped to the IV pole and showed it to Galadis. A young girl with thinning hair and large eyes stared back at her. “She is my new purpose in life,” Maglor said with a smile, and when Galadis still didn’t answer, he added, “Stem cell research.” 

Galadis furrowed her brow as Maglor returned the photo to the pole. 

“They’re taking cells from my body that can be manipulated to become any cells of the body - blood marrow cells in this case, as we’re trying to cure this girl with leukemia,” Maglor explained gently. “They can use human cells, but they’ve noticed greater success with elven cells, especially since cancer rates among us are close to nonexistent. It’s an area they want to study. But we’re racing against time. That’s probably why you’ve seen me looking sad.” 

Galadis opened her mouth, then closing them, took a step back, taking in the full sight around her. Maglor smiled. 

“It’s not a clean and high-tech facility,” he agreed, “but we have to keep things secretive since stem cell research is gaining controversy.” 

“And you? Do you agree?” Galadis asked. 

Maglor laughed. “I’m not about to start spouting a new elf out of my arm! I am not looking to cheat or change Eru’s designs, but save a girl’s life. Perhaps then I can find my way back to Valinor.” 

_That’s right. His evil deeds._

“Want me to stay here with you? We can go back home together.” 

Maglor shook his head. “These sessions can take all day, and I wouldn’t want you to get bored here.” 

“I won’t. I have an extra room at my place you can crash in whenever you want.”

“I’d hate to be a bother, but thank you. I will keep it in mind should I ever find myself with the need.” 

Galadis nodded her understanding. “Promise we’ll sit down together again and talk some time, then? We seem to like the same places. I’ll get tickets for the Theater. Or the Cubs game - or not. We can tour the whole city together. The Art Institute is free on Tuesdays!” 

“I’d enjoy that,” Maglor said, bowing his head. 

She gave him one last smile before turning around and heading back where she had come.

*

Maglor watched Galadis go. His smile faltered. Sighing deeply, he hung his head. 

**Author's Note:**

> All locations and roads mentioned, save for the shady medical research building, are actual places in Chicago. This story is set in between late summer to fall of the year 2000. 
> 
> Max Headroom is also a thing you can Google if you wanted to amuse (or frighten) yourself. ;) 
> 
> My visual image of Galadis was inspired by Alanis Morissette in her video of [Hand in My Pocket](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ8D5Ihe4hg). I had fun building up and seeing how a Tolkien elf would live in our world. Happy Halloween!


End file.
